


Suspension

by odoridango



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 01:47:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3750352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odoridango/pseuds/odoridango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The conversation that Mikasa and Eren will never have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Suspension

**Author's Note:**

> So [Island_of_Reil](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil) has some really piercing Eren and Mikasa dynamics in their fics okay, which got me thinking about our favorite set of siblings and all the feelings they give me. So basically this is what I think would be the conversation they would have if they finally confronted/addressed all the issues lingering between them (though it will probably never ever happen).

Eren’s strange when he wakes. His eyes are half-lidded, murky, and before she can open her mouth to say a word she’s halted by the uncharacteristic gentleness and care with which he straightens out her faded, worn scarf, fluffing it up and patting it back down in place, around her neck. Eren touches casually, but tenderness from him is rare. There are many things about delicacy, about the wordless, that he still cannot understand, and even though home was something he gave to her, he’s never really captured the meaning of it.

“Mikasa, you’re lucky,” he says, putting his hands back in his lap, looking her straight in the face, and it blindsides her, the hot oil that slides down her throat, the bolt of sudden anger that tightens her fists and tenses her mouth.

 _Lucky_ , lucky for what. Of all things, luck. Luck had nothing to do with it. Her mother and father are dead, her foster mother’s corpse is probably lying out abandoned somewhere, and her foster father is missing. Her brother stares back at her guilelessly, with scarless hands and unmarked skin, fingers tracing over the fleshy meat where his right thumb meets his palm.

“You’re strong,” Eren says, and his voice falls flat, thin, like a reed. It’s unlike him. “You’ve never had to think about being strong. You just are.”

“I have _family_ to protect,” she says, quiet and deadly, but Eren doesn’t heed the signs, he never does, charges in blindly, stupidly, immature and impulsive.

“You don’t need to protect me.”

“I don’t care—“

“ _You shouldn’t be protecting me_ ,” he hisses, low and angry. “I’m _weak_. I’m useless. I haven’t done anything. Power doesn’t mean anything if you aren’t strong.”

“That’s not something you get to decide,” Mikasa says, skin pale. It’s like her vision is tunneling, she can’t recall ever being so angry in her life.

“And you do?” Eren spits. “You’ll decide it for me huh, like you always do?”

“I’m trying to keep you alive!” she says, and she surprises herself, her own voice rising and ringing in her ears. 

“And I’m telling you you shouldn’t!” Eren shouts, wrapped in the sheets of a sick bed where he’d laid silent and steaming for the last nine hours, five of them without a face. “Don’t you get tired? Don’t you get sick of this? Do you know what I would do if I had your strength?! It’s a waste!”

She hits him. She hits him hard enough for him to bruise, as much as he can these days, she hits him even though she knows she shouldn’t, and when he comes back to face her with a snarl she hits him again, snapping his head the other way with a crack of her fist.

“That’s not something you get to decide,” she says again numbly. Her hands are shaking. Eren just turns back to look at her, quiet and resentful, and for the first time she doesn’t want to meet his eyes, doesn’t want to see him. He lowers his gaze. She feels tired.

 _You can’t win if you don’t fight_.

When she leaves, there’s the ghost of his fingers near her neck, heartbreakingly gentle.

 

 

 


End file.
